Aonarach
by Soap Lady
Summary: Popularity doesn't guarantee happiness, even when you're the captain of the basketball team. Happy Hogan is more troubled and has greater depth than anyone could imagine and longs to reach out to two people he thinks could understand. Happy/Gene/Whitney


_Author's Note: Hello everyone! Now that the excitement over Season Two has ebbed it's time to get back to writing. I wanted to give Happy a little more depth than just the "Dumb Jock" archetype. Hope you enjoy._

_This story contains hints of alternate sexuality in a canon character but nothing explicit. I just wanted to let you know in case you don't like that sort of thing. Feedback is more than welcome._

_Special thanks to my official word fluffer, FluffleNeCharka. Could not have done it without you._

**Aonarach **

Happy Hogan dribbled the ball a few more times, bent his knees, and easily sunk a hook shot from thirty feet away. His parents had had the basement sealed, soundproofed and redone into a home basketball court, an addition his team mates would have killed for in a heartbeat. They claimed it was his birthday present but it was more likely they were tired of having the plaster on his ceiling repaired from all the times he'd bounced the ball against it. He came down here when there was nothing good on TV or he'd played all his video games. Sometimes he'd practice for hours.

Alone.

It was good, really. He could make all the difficult trick shots he wanted and he'd tried them all. Blindfolded. One hand behind his back. Over his shoulder. Nothing but net every time.

The acoustics and the hours uninterrupted honed his skills to an edge. He wasn't top of the team, he was out of their league. It wasn't as satisfying as it should've been to be good.

Happy knew he could probably invite some of the team over. They'd enjoy the private court, his plasma screen TV always on ESPN, and the full-sized fridge of snacks. But they would also want to invite some of the cheerleaders and they would want to want chick shows or flirt. He didn't want that. This was a Man Cave. _His_ Man Cave. Or Fortress of Solitude like that comic book he read as a kid. Even though the door was open, nobody else ever came in.

His parents weren't home but that wasn't a shocker. They were gone all the time now that he was in high school, not that they'd been very present to begin with. He doubted he'd seen them three times in a month and the idea of them attending one of his games was a joke. Basketball was just not their thing, which was cool. He understood. He still loved them. Any good kid would and that was what he tried to be - a good kid. It just simply would never be good enough.

Happy knew he was not the kid his parents had wanted. Mom was a shrink who talked to people about feelings and wrote books. She made people feel better and helped them when other people hurt them. Dad taught at ESU and didn't find it funny when his son joked about the chem lab catching on fire. He was a serious man, an academic without a clue as to how to understand the child he'd been handed by fate. So he didn't try to understand after a while. It was like he spoke jock and they spoke nerd. It was fine, he really didn't care.

Mom tested his smarts when he was about five and not immediately getting super genius grades. Already, they were disappointed in what he was not accomplishing. They were smart. They saw the flaws right away. She told him slowly and gently in small words that he had ADD and was dyslexic, which meant he saw his words all scrambled. She and Dad seemed to lose interest in him after that and hired a nanny to take care of him. More accurately his father was tired of trying to puzzle him out and his mother had high profile clients to take care of.

He cried at first but Mrs. Odell was pretty cool. Her son played for the Knicks and she had him come over and teach Happy how to play basketball. He finally had something he was good at! Really, really good! Kevin told him he could go pro when he was grown up and _he_ would know. He was an expert in his field just like Happy's parents were in theirs. When he proudly showed off his new found skills his mom smiled and said. "Well, I've always been fond of the Multiple Intelligence Theory. Your father and I are smart with our minds. You are smart with your body. How nice for you."

She told him she'd mention him in her next book and then went back to ignoring him. It was okay, really. His friends at school were always complaining that their parents wanted to spend so much time with them and they were always hugging or kissing them in front of everyone. He was proud that he didn't have that problem. Some of them even had to endure shopping trips and pictures at holiday get together and baby photos. His parents didn't subject him to that.

Hugs and kisses from parents were for wussies.

Things started to change when he was fourteen. Someone from a school called the Tomorrow Academy wanted him to play on their team and he could go to school for free. Sometimes he could hear them brag to their friends at dinner parties about their son getting in to one of the most exclusive private schools in Manhattan. He noticed they never said why but hey, he could play anywhere. He never had to go to the parties, even though they were usually at his house. All he had to say was, "Good evening, everyone." and "School is going well, thank you." and he could be excused to go play in the basement, away from their prying eyes and the not-real smiles of his parents.

Happy didn't like talking to old people anyway.

His teammates didn't like him becoming team captain after only being on the team three months but no one could argue when they started winning all the time. They especially hated it when a sudden growth spurt made him at least a head taller than everyone else. Some of them stopped talking to him, which was cool. Most of them were big smelly ugly dudes. The Owls were lucky to have gotten a good looking guy like him to lead the team. It looked good in the school paper and helped keep school morale up according to one teacher. He didn't know what that meant, but he liked being complimented for real so he smiled and said thank you anyway.

He met Pepper Potts halfway through his second year. Someone said she'd been kicked out of her old school for assaulting some dude on the swim team she thought was attacking some girl. But she didn't go to jail and her old man worked for the government so they let her in. He noticed her because at first she was always alone.

Like him.

Then at the end of the year she became friends with Rhodey Rhodes, a pretty cool guy. For a nerd, that was. He had a lot of big words like Happy's dad but he wasn't so cold. Pepper wasn't alone any more and he didn't find her as interesting. But she always talked to him. But she talked to everyone. Really, really fast. He didn't get what she said most of the time but she was nice. Not fake, like some girls who offered him... stuff... to make the cheer squad. He was interested in... stuff... but if a girl couldn't do a cartwheel or the pyramid she didn't need to be on the squad and he didn't care if they got mad and told their daddy who was on the school board. What were they gonna do, kick him off the team? Fat chance. Not while they were winning. He wasn't that stupid. Everyone just thought so.

Junior year and Happy was now the Big Man on Campus, whatever that meant. Mostly it meant more cheerleaders and more people sitting by him at lunch. Not much changed. He also met Tony Stark for the first time. He thought a rich kid like that would show up in a limo, hang with models, and have a solid gold backpack. But Stark showed up with Rhodes. In a _minivan. _Plus, he was a huge nerd. And he almost lived in the bathroom! How could any one person go that much? Maybe he was sick or something. Happy hoped the guy didn't die or something. Nerd boy was helping him with Science. Best grades ever! And he didn't make fun of Happy even if his nerd talk made other nerds confused. It was better than nothing, he figured.

Not long after Nerdy Stark came Gene Khan. A hot Chinese dude who wore shades to class every day and had a pretty face no guy should have.

Oh, wow.

Gene sat next to Happy, which was awesome! He did his best to make the new guy feel welcome, even gave him a cool nickname. The Khan. Khaaaaaaaaaaaaan!

Gene didn't talk much. Except to Stark. Happy hoped Gene wasn't a nerd too but no nerd could ever be that hot. He was also alone a lot. Enough that it was hard to tell what he was. He didn't need other people. Other people wanted to be near him, but he was cool alone. Nothing got to the Khan.

Again, just like Happy. That was...nice. Happy liked looking at the guy when the pretty boy thought no one saw him. Cute little butt.

Happy wasn't really in to guys. He was around naked dudes all the time in the locker room and nothing. He didn't buy into his mother's gender and sexual identity theories. What someone liked was what they liked, the end. That was all there was to it. So he'd thought he didn't like guys. But Gene was pretty and slim, kinda like a girl. But not scrawny. Happy watched the way he moved and could tell the other boy was pretty built under that shirt. There was something about Gene Khan that made Happy's shorts tight sometimes. Maybe it was the sway to his hips or the way his eyes glinted when he looked at someone over his glasses. It didn't matter. What mattered was that he was perfect and he was near enough to ogle.

Then there was Whitney Stane. Now that was a hottie. Long blonde hair, big green eyes and legs that would probably wrap all the way around him, not that he thought about that a lot. Okay, maybe he did. But she was by herself even more than Gene. The Khan would at least hang out with the Nerd Brigade now and then but Whitney was on the roof all the time. Sometimes he watch her face when she thought she was alone and he could swear he saw her cry. Not that she ever said anything. She wasn't the kind of girl to make a scene.

But no one that pretty should cry.

When he saw her like that he wanted to... hold her or something. Maybe cuddle her in his lap and make her feel better. She should smile more. She needed to lighten up. He was inexplicably worried about her even though she wasn't in return. He tried to make her laugh in class but that didn't work. She and him should totally go to Bermuda. He wanted to teach her how to have fun. Her, and Gene Khan. Together, maybe. The two of them needed to stop being so down in the dumps. They were the coolest people he'd ever met.

Happy had never thought about doing another guy. The thought of sticking his... you know... up some other dude's butt sounded gross. How did the other guy poop afterward? And there was no way any else's thingy was going up his. But when he looked at Gene Khan, he couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to kiss him, take his shirt off. Make out. After that it got fuzzy but he figured they'd figure it out at the time. One step at a time, right? He had to get the Khan to make out level before anything for further, those were the rules of high school.

He kinda thought Gene had a thing for Pepper. The Chinese kid didn't _like _her, not at first, but a dude always knew when another dude was checking a girl out and Happy knew Gene was thinking the same things about Pepper that Happy thought about Gene. Pepper wasn't pretty but she was cute. In a kid sister kind of way. She was always asking Happy to hang with her and her friends and she could be funny. He didn't want to date her or anything but he hoped she'd be around a long time. She was sweet. One day she would make a good mom to someone.

Happy liked sitting behind Whitney in class. He had a nice view of well, her behind when she sat down. Sometimes he thought about kissing her too. She smelled nice every day and he wanted to find out what her lip gloss tasted like. Whitney had class, not like those cheerleaders and he wondered what kind of guys she dated. Not Stark. How could a smart guy be so dumb about girls? Whitney liked the guy and he never asked her out. Stark was kind of a loser that way. Or maybe he just wasn't smart with his feelings. Nobody could figure Tony out. But nobody even _tried_ to figure Whitney or Gene out.

Happy didn't understand how he felt about Gene or Whitney. His mom was good with feelings and stuff and she'd have all sorts of big words to explain it all, confuse him more. She would make him regret trying to talk to her. He didn't want that. He just knew when they looked alone and sad he wanted to hold them. Kiss them. Make it better.

And then _he_ would feel better.

Then, things got weird. Khan disappeared. Whitney got a fever or something and forgot she'd ever gone to school. She seemed more alone than ever after that. Nobody had heard from Khan in weeks. The classes seemed quieter than ever. Stark, Rhodes and Pepper stopped asking him to hang out and they never said yes when he invited them over. They were the only people who came to his party, even though he worked really hard to be a DJ. Not even his coach showed.

Yeah, whatever. So what if his team didn't like him and the girls wanted to use him? Who needed the Nerd Brigade to come over? He was Happy Hogan, future NBA superstar. He was going to be rich and famous one day with a supermodel wife and his own brand of shoes called Happy's Feet. He had never had a lot of friends. He didn't care about cliques and popularity and cool kids. He didn't need anyone. He was fine.

Just... fine.

Alone.


End file.
